Indigo
by violet-saxon
Summary: [AU] You can leave your town, and you can start a new life in a new place, but that's no guarantee that your problems won't follow you, or that you won't become entangled in more along the way. As Naruto is about to discover when he goes to start university in Tokyo [NaruSasu][Thar be angst here!]


**A/N: **I've never written for Naruto before, but I've loved it for years (ask my best friend: I've got MAD love for Sasuke Uchiha, and I always have. She got me a Sasuke cake one year for my birthday, and I made a sound only cats could hear), so here this is! If you've read my bio, you'll know how I feel about the end of the manga, so I'm not gonna go into that here! That's stuff for the soap box! To the fic!

It's an AU university fic, and this is going to give away my Naruto pairing preference. Here is your warning: it's **yaoi**. If that doesn't float your boat, this is, sadly, where you will be leaving us, and I wish you well. If you don't mind, then let us continue together. It's a NaruSasu/SasuNaru fic, because that's what I like :) The following topics will be brought up through the course of the story, as a heads-up to all of y'all:

Sex, though no graphic descriptions

Depression, self-harm, suicidal thinking, suicide attempts

Mental health issues

Violence

Sexual abuse

Bad language

If you were to talk to my beta, one of my dearest friends whom I met nearly eight years ago through our mutual love of Kingdom Hearts, she'd tell you I'm a pain in the behind for cliffhangers and screwing up characters' lives. You've been warned. I am actually writing this after reading a fantastic SasuNaru trilogy by FastForward (read it, folks: it's addictive stuff, though heart-wrenching in places! Amazing stuff!), so in some small way, this is for her as thanks for that. Maybe she'll never know, but I do not mind! Her stories inspired this, and I can only hope it goes down as well! Anyway, if you survived this ramble, enjoy it, folks!

**Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. They belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I'm just creating an alternate universe offset from the one he created and possibly ruining the party. But not getting any profit from it!**

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><p><em>Indigo: The colour between blue and violet in a rainbow. The combination of two dark colours, creating another. It may not always be visible, but it's always there.<em>

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><p>He'd never been in Tokyo before, and Naruto Uzumaki had to admit, he was pretty damn excited.<p>

Of course, he hadn't come alone, he hadn't been allowed to: he had been accompanied by his guardian, Iruka Umino, as even though he was about to start university, he was still a minor, being eighteen, and Iruka would be following him around until his coming-of-age at twenty, and even then he'd probably linger beyond that. Leaving him alone wasn't what anyone wanted, bar Naruto himself, and it had taken months of negotiations just to get an apartment that _wasn't_ with Iruka. He was still living with someone, by all accounts, but he had no idea who the guy, or the girl, was. The description on the website had said it was a two-person apartment, so it was natural for Naruto to assume he'd be with someone. While Iruka had agreed to allow Naruto to live away from him, he had continued to insist on living as close-by as the Uzumaki would allow, which was about three metro stops away.

Iruka had seen the best, and worst, of Naruto, and like you'd expect from a legal guardian, he just wanted him to be safe and well. Naruto hadn't exactly had the easiest of childhoods, with his parents dying while he was in infancy, under what everyone deemed to be 'mysterious circumstances', and people generally avoided Naruto like the plague due to his own personal problems, and some rumours that were started when he was a child that... well, safe to say that they weren't pleasant. Iruka had hoped, against hope, that his young charge would stay in Osaka, and attend one of the universities there, as he'd had offers following the sitting, and passing, of their respective entrance exams. But, being Naruto, he had taken one of the offers in Tokyo, to get as far away from his past, and his problems, as he could. This was a fresh start for Naruto Uzumaki, and a chance to restart his life in a new place. No one could _possibly_ know his story here, right?

"Sakura House..." Naruto read the sign above the door, crinkling his nose a little in distaste. The sign actually read 'Kasuga Heights', and Sakura House was the name of the agency who controlled the building, with their name present on the frontage, as well, but it didn't mean Naruto had to like it. "Couldn't they have come up with a less, I dunno, _flowery_ name?"

"Are you _seriously_ complaining about the name of the building?" Iruka shot his young charge a disapproving look, shaking his head, his brown ponytail swaying from side to side as he did so. "It's just a building, Naruto, and you were the one who said you didn't want to live in that Leo Palace place I showed you because the commute was 'too long'."

"And the place was the size of a shoebox!" Naruto countered, half-wailing as he did so. "It was tiny! How is a person supposed to _live_ in an apartment that small?!"

"They get by!" Iruka hit back evenly, watching the sulk on the blonde's face with some amusement. Their cursory visit to that Leo Palace complex hadn't gone well, and Naruto had complained excessively about it on the bullet train back to Osaka, but he wasn't entirely unreasonable in his objections. The place was a little far to come on the train to class, and considering what the metro could be like early in the morning, if it was anything like the train system in Kansai, he was a little glad that Naruto had chosen an option within walking distance of his campus. "Besides, a lot of different kinds of people live in Sakura House buildings. You'll make a lot of friends, at any rate, and you just need to jump on the metro and go up the line to Sugamo and you'll be able to come and see me." He and Naruto had moved to Tokyo near enough three days after the blonde's high school graduation, and had been living in Iruka's two-bedroom apartment in Sugamo, which was above an incredibly good ramen shop, ever since. That was March: now it was April, and time for Naruto's new school life to begin.

"Yeah, yeah, come on!" Naruto huffed, grabbing up his things and almost stomping into the building, his guardian following behind with a couple of boxes of his things. To their abundant relief, the elevator was working, which was a comfort, as they knew Naruto's apartment to be on the tenth floor of the building. It was slow arriving, though, and slow climbing, too, but eventually, it made it to the tenth floor, and the two bailed out into the hallway, catching a breeze from exposed side of the hall, as well as a rather nice view of the rollercoaster at Tokyo Dome City, and the top of the dome itself. Naruto had made a promise to himself to try that attraction out, only to find out it had been out of commission for over a year due to an accident. Shame.

"Here we are," Iruka halted the party at Naruto's new front door: 1007. The blonde delved into his pocket and took out his new, as-yet unadorned key, and put it in the lock, twisting it before pulling the door back to get inside. Immediately, Naruto could tell that they weren't going to be alone here: his new roommate had already arrived. There were a couple of pairs of shoes in the shoe box, mens shoes, from first glance, and a pair of slippers on the wooden floor beyond the entrance hall. At least he knew it was another man he'd be living with. The pair quickly shed their shoes, opting for just shoes and socks for the time being, and shuffled into the main room of the apartment.

Naruto was pleased to find that the room looked a lot better than he had imagined it would. On leaving the entrance hall, you were brought into a large living-dining-kitchen area, with a three-seater couch and large flatscreen television, a dining table and six chairs, and a relatively well-appointed kitchen. His new roommate appeared to have stocked the place up a bit with his own things in the kitchen, but other than that, there wasn't much by way of personal touches out here. Perhaps he was waiting for Naruto to show before they decided what to do about this shared space. On the far wall were two sets of sliding doors, no doubt leading into the bedrooms, one of which was his. He could see that someone had applied white boards to the front door of the sliding set-up, and the one on the right read 'Uchiha'. No doubt, this signified his roommate's claim on that particular room.

"I think this place is nice!" Iruka remarked brightly, giving the place an approving nod, smiling at his charge. "And look! The kitchen looks like it was installed within the last ten years! That's a good sign, right?" So many of the pictures had made it look like the kitchens had been put in during the seventies or the eighties, but this one did look a good deal newer. Naruto wondered if something had encouraged such an installation, like perhaps a fire. He moved across the shared space and to the left-hand set of sliding doors, with the bare whiteboard on the front. Taking up the pen that was attached to the plastic unit with a chord, the blonde scribbled on it with a grin, accenting it with little whirls that he had loved to doodle on his homework since he was in elementary school.

'_NARUTO UZUMAKI. COME IN AND PLAY, IF YOU DARE_'.

He then pulled the door open to check out the room inside. This room continued with the wooden floor, and had a wooden single bedframe to the right-hand wall, on which was some plastic-wrapped bedlinen, no doubt futon mattresses, blankets, pillows, and the like, and on the left-hand wall was what he imagined to be his closet. The wall directly across from him was mottled, frosted glass, sliding doors out onto a small balcony, and through the glass, he could make out what he assumed to be a washing line. He had noticed a washer and dryer in the kitchen, which was a huge relief. He hated going to coin laundromats. There was a desk against the wall on which the door was situated, with a wheel-clad desk chair, and a few shelving units were scattered about the place, for books, and a nightstand was situated beside the bed. This probably meant, since he had the western-style room, his roommate had gone for the traditional Japanese-style room, with tatami mat floors and everything. More fool him, Naruto thought gleefully. Tatami mats were so delicate, and easy to wreck, that he much preferred this arrangement.

"You got the western room!" Iruka captioned Naruto's realisation, going into the room after him, setting the boxes down in the middle of the floor. "Nice room! And you have an AC unit! You'll have to check the manual to see if it doubles as a heater, or else I noticed a kotatsu in the living room. Maybe that's your roommate's, though." Naruto _loved_ kotatsus. He wanted to meet the one who had invented them and shake their hand for their ingenuity. A heated table with the added warmth and comfort of a blanket attachment was the work of true genius in his book. If his roommate was planning to be cruel and not share it, he had every intention of purchasing his own. As cheaply as his student budget would allow, anyway; he knew them to be quite expensive here in the capital.

"Yeah, this place isn't bad!" Naruto agreed with his guardian, giving the older man a smile. "Wanna check out the shared space while I start unpacking?" Iruka nodded, leaving his young charge, like a son to him, to his own devices, though knowing Naruto, when he said 'unpacking', he meant 'throw my stuff all over the place so it looked lived in'. That was how it had always worked when they had lived together, anyway. It was a wasted exercise, trying to get the blue-eyed boy to keep his room tidy, and one that Iruka had given up on when Naruto was around thirteen.

"Looks like you have cable!" Iruka called out to Naruto as he flipped through a few channels. They'd gotten used to the differences between TV in Kansai and the TV here in Kanto while living together in Sugamo, so they had a fair idea of what was in store. Besides, the differences were hardly life-changing; it was just regional differences more than anything. They didn't need the Osaka weather report now, anyway. "And it looks like you have wifi!" Iruka turned the TV off and moved over to the blinking wifi box, examining it carefully, flipping it upside down, where he knew he'd find the login ID and the password. He quickly jotted both down on a notepad he kept in his jacket pocket and went back into the bedroom to gift it to Naruto. As he had expected: it looked like a hurricane had been through here. "Oh, come on, Naruto! You're eighteen now! Can't you keep your bedroom clean?!"

"It feels homey like this!" Naruto remarked with a grin, taking the piece of paper from the brunette, examining it carefully. "This the internet details?" Iruka nodded, and Naruto's grin grew wider. "Great! Means I can check out porn tonight if I'm bored!" Of course. At this age, the blonde's hormones were running on one setting: horny. They'd acquired an unlimited internet package back when they were in Osaka in the wake of Iruka's discovering this, and had hit octaves that would have killed mice when he saw the price of their internet bill that month.

"_Please_ check with your roommate before you do something like that!" Iruka wailed. "You guys need to arrange between yourselves how to pay the bills! That wifi box may be in his name, and you can't go downloading or streaming explicit content while someone else pays for it!" Without meaning to, the older man was blushing as he spoke. He hated how he came across as prudish sometimes. It wasn't even like he was a virgin, so he didn't have that excuse to fall back on. It was just that discussing sex was awkward for him.

"I'll check with him when he gets back!" Naruto promised, holding up his hands with a laugh, moving over to take his laptop out of its bag and place it on his desk. "Damn, Iruka! You need to get over your sex aversion and just talk about it! We didn't even need to have the birds and the bees talk! I heard all I needed to from school, books, and the internet! Yet you still sat down, like a babbling idiot, and _tried_ to get it out!" Iruka remembered that day well, and the memory was mortifying. He was a terrible parent. But really, Naruto hadn't turned out _that_ badly. He had his issues, and his demons, but they were working through it. Now, though, he wouldn't be just down the hall when something happened: he'd be a ten minute train ride away. He felt uneasy, being so far from him, but he had to trust Naruto to live his own life now. "I was checking over the club roster, and I'm gonna try out for baseball." Now _this_ was good news indeed. Naruto had excelled at baseball in high school, and had been one of their district's top picks as far as athletic excellence went. Iruka had hoped Naruto would try out for the baseball team, and was glad to hear that he would.

"That's good!" Iruka smiled, heading back out into the living room with his charge. "I'll do what I can to be at every game. I think I'll be tied up with some things with one of the English clubs, though, so I won't get to see all of your practices." Iruka was, without doubt, Naruto's number one fan, and he'd always gone above and beyond to support him in every way possible. Here, though, Iruka had a job at the university as an English teacher, and Naruto very much suspected he'd end up in his class, having smartly elected to take English this year. It was a lot easier to get a job in this modern world if you could speak good English, and though he knew the TOEIC exam was incredibly difficult, having that on his resumé would put him near the top of the pile when recruitment season came up.

"That's cool," Naruto dismissed his guardian's worry with a smile. "Don't worry about it. Besides, I don't even know if I'll make the team! For collegiate baseball, our team is the best in the country. _Way_ better than Waseda or Keio! I may not even get picked!" Iruka laughed with him at this.

"Impossible!" Iruka said encouragingly, patting his young charge on his shoulder. "They'd be crazy to not take you! They'll see your athletic reports from home and be clambering over themselves to recruit you!" Naruto could only hope. He wanted them to judge him for his baseball skills, not his behavioural issues, of which he had many. He became sharp, focused, and disciplined on the baseball field, though, no matter how unruly he was everywhere else. "Hold on a moment..." Iruka paused, a frown marring his features as he moved over to the door of Naruto's currently-absent roommate. "Uchiha... Uchiha... Why do I know that name?"

"I dunno," Naruto shrugged indifferently. He didn't recognise the name, anyway, so he didn't get where the familiarity was coming from in his guardian. "I've never heard it before." A light of recollection, of realisation, then seemed to flash across the older man's face, and he turned to look at his charge with some worry.

"Uchiha... You don't think..."

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><p>He had to be one of the few people to go out to Aokigahara and come back again.<p>

It was a place renowned for being a suicide hotspot. A least a hundred people a year went there to end their lives, overcome by stress and despair, their lives disappearing amongst the dense clusters of trees at the northwest base of Mount Fuji, but that wasn't why Sasuke Uchiha went there. He didn't go there as often as he did with a plan in mind for ending his own life, but because someone he knew, someone he had loved, had ended his life there, and going back there felt right. It kept the wound open, in spite of what the psychological professionals who had been counselling him for nearly ten years wanted. He wasn't sure he wanted it to heal yet: his death had left behind more questions, and going there was like a pilgrimage to try and ascertain answers he would, clearly, never receive.

The dark-haired boy had his over-ear headphones on, blaring the loud music of Golden Bomber into his head, while he stood on the Chuo train line platform, waiting to get a train back to Suidobashi. It was a one-stop subway ride from there back to Kasuga, where he lived, but more often than not, he walked it. The walk wasn't entirely unpleasant, and there was a lot to look at on the way, including Tokyo Dome City, and several convenience stores to duck into should he choose to. He hated how busy and noisy Shinjuku station was. One of the busiest train stations in the world, so they said. For reasons even he couldn't understand, he had disembarked his train out of Shinjuku at Sendagaya, barely a couple of stops into the trip, and he now stood, in the fading daylight, on a sparsely-populated platform, waiting for the next train to come along. As much as he puzzled over why he had gotten off so sporadically, a part of him, a small part of him, knew exactly why he had.

_Are you going to do it this time?_

Sasuke pulled off his headphones, turning off the mp3 player in his phone, and started to clench and unclench his hands. Ignoring this voice, that was always the same voice, that same, familiar voice, took a lot of practice and a lot of willpower. Sasuke often likened it to the willpower he imagined was required by those wanting to give up smoking, drinking, or drug-taking. Having dealt with the difficulty in this way, it was enough to make him want to steer clear of those three particular vices. He didn't need to become a chain-smoking alcoholic drug addict along with everything else.

"Stop it..." Sasuke muttered to himself, putting his hands over his ears in some vain attempt to block out the noise. "You're not real... Stop it..." It was lucky that he was one of the few people on this poorly-lit platform, or else those around him would start thinking he was crazy. Not that they were wrong or anything; Sasuke certainly _felt_ like he was crazy.

_It won't end until you do it. So just do it._

His life had been on a steep downward spiral for nearly ten years now. Since his family, his entire family, had been wiped out by one lunatic serial killer, leaving only himself and his elder brother, Itachi, alive. Nobody ever found the man who had committed this atrocity, and it had been on the news for months. No one in this crazy metropolis had ever had the guts to wipe out every trace of a family in such a way, especially a family as wealthy and well-connected as the Uchiha family. Only Sasuke knew the identity of his parents' killer, and it was the same man whose voice whispered these dark little thoughts in his head: the same man who, upon telling Sasuke what he had done, had ended his life gruesomely before the boy's eyes in the forests of Aokigahara.

His brother, Itachi.

He couldn't understand why it had happened, _why_ his brother had killed every member of their family, but spared him, and going to that damn forest every weekend wasn't offering him any answers, either. So much of his life before the age of nine was a black hole, only patches of it still present in his memory, but everything after that had been hell on earth. Was any of this worth it anymore? He'd never get the answers he wanted, or know why his brother did what he did, so why did he keep up this ridiculous charade? He was supposed to die with his parents, he knew he was, but he was still here. _Why_ was he still here? When the chance to bring an end to all of this chaos was just a few steps in front of him?

"The Chuo line train, bound for Tokyo, will be arriving at platform two shortly," the almost musical female voice announced the coming of the train Sasuke was to get on to return home, but as he moved closer to the yellow line, he found his body continuing to move, as the train started to roll, with some considerable speed, into the station. He kept on walking, as if in a trance, with every intention of walking out in front of the train, and bringing an end to all of this.

The wind was almost ripped out of his lungs as he was pulled back, rather jerkily, from stepping over the edge as the train ripped by, its brakes squeaking as it came to a halt. The Uchiha couldn't help letting out a cry of shock as he was pulled away, and for a moment, he remained unmoving in the person's arms. When he took a look at who it was, though, he wasn't pleased at all.

"Shit..." Sasuke bit out a curse under his breath as the uniformed man proceeded to take him by the arm and bring him to the station master's office. It was one of the station's security staff, and this was hardly the first time Sasuke Uchiha had been stopped from walking in front of a train and brought into the office. Here we go again.

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><p><strong>A few words from me before I go: I'm basing this in part on my experiences at a Japanese university, specifically my 'alma mater', as it were: Toyo University. While perhaps not up to the academic par of the likes of Waseda, Keio, and Tokyo University (ToDai), Toyo's baseball team are renowned for being one of the best, if not <strong>_**the**_** best, in collegiate baseball in Japan. I know they won the championship the year I was there, and the year after, at the very least. You write what you know!**

**Also, depression is a horrible disease, which I myself have suffered with for some years, but no one ever has to suffer alone. You can always reach out and get help. Japan's suicide rate is alarmingly high, and I remember well that many trains in Tokyo and beyond were disrupted on a daily basis due to "personal accidents". A tragic fact. But never suffer in silence: reach out and talk to someone, be it a family member, a close friend, a professional, anyone. It will help, I guarantee it! Stay excellent, people!**


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